


How to Tie a Knot with the Frays of a Thread

by niamh_reads



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brothers, Early Days, Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Adoptive Siblings, Keith (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith is 15, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Self-Worth Issues, Shiro is 19, Song: How to Save a Life (The Fray)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27498793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niamh_reads/pseuds/niamh_reads
Summary: Something is wrong with Keith, and Shiro needs to fix it before the frays are too thin to tie back together.How do you save a life?Inspired by The Fray
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	How to Tie a Knot with the Frays of a Thread

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for non-explicit thoughts of suicide and non-explicit mentions of child abuse.

Shiro sat on the edge Keith’s bed. He stood. Sat again. Switched Keith’s globe lamp on, spun it.  
Shiro didn’t know why Keith was taking so long to come back from Physics class when the lab was only the other side of the courtyard, but he as much as he wanted to delay this conversation, the wait was even less fun. He drew in a deep breath and began to go over the speech he had constructed in his head again. 

He was only halfway through when the door opened, Keith stepped in and Shiro felt every word he had prepared go tumbling out of his brain.

“Shiro?” Keith was surprised to see his mentor in his room when they hadn’t planned to meet that afternoon, but he didn’t suspect anything yet. He was still happy to see Shiro. 

The older man was standing now, and while Keith put his bag down and went to the drawer to change into a Sex Pistols t-shirt (an older one of Shiro’s that was still too big on him), Shiro took the opportunity to assess the kid. He looked gaunt, almost as thin as he was when he arrived at the Garrison and certainly too thin for a fifteen year old boy. This observation reinforced the seriousness of the situation, the situation Shiro had come to talk about. Keith glanced back up at his mentor, sensing Shiro’s tension.

“Did Clancy disrespect your Jordans again?” he nodded at the stuffed toy gripped by large hands. Shiro looked down in surprise and sighed, placing the unicorn on Keith’s pillow. Keith knew something was up when Shiro didn’t even laugh at the Clancy joke. In fact, Shiro looked grim. His mouth was pressed into a hard line. Whatever conversation was coming, it wasn’t going to be easy.

Keith didn’t bother moving out of his spot near the door, a habit from previous days where confrontation nearly always preceded escape. He wasn’t expecting to have to escape from Shiro, but survival instincts like that become second nature.

“What’s wrong?” He inquired.

“Do you want a list?” 

Keith’s walls went up with a speed that betrayed how close he kept them. He was always ready to protect himself. Shiro wished that he extended that same protective energy past immediate hurts and into protecting his future. Keith’s face became closed off, and Shiro felt a sudden rush of de ja vú at how closely the teenager in front of him resembled the boy he found just over a year ago. Shiro had barely noticed the changes, having seen Keith every day since, but now that he had regressed to that again Shiro could see the difference a year of food, safety and stability had made. The question was why is this happening again?

“We need to talk about what’s going on.”

Keith remained impassive. “There’s nothing going on.”

“There is clearly something going on, Keith. You haven’t turned in any assignments in two weeks, you’re skipping classes and disappearing without letting anyone know where you are and I heard you told Professor Quinn to go fuck himself when he asked you for your homework. What’s going on?” Shiro’s tone was soft, never accusatory but the worry bled through anyway and for Keith, worry was worse. 

“You have more important things to worry about than me not having my homework done, Shiro.”

“No, Keith.”

“Well then that’s your problem isn’t it!” Keith exploded. He couldn’t stand Shiro worrying about him, so he would make him annoyed instead. Keith felt a familiar defensiveness settling in his spine, reinforcing it, straightening his back and pushing his chin up. Shiro didn’t take the bait however, as Shiro rarely does. In fact, his voice got lower and even kinder. 

“You can talk to me. You’ve talked to me before. What’s different this time?”

“This time there’s nothing to talk about.” Keith was back to being impassive. They stood there for a few moments, Shiro with a furrowed brow trying to analyse his younger friend, and Keith with arms folded and a blank countenance, unmoving.

“What you’re doing could have serious effects on your grades. I can’t- I’m not just going to let you throw your life away.” He implored.

“Then stop caring. If it’s such a burden on you.”

Shiro drew in a sharp breath. “It’s not a burden- you’re not a burden. But you have to help me out here, Keith. You can’t stop turning up to class if you want to get anywhere.”

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, because Keith was spinning around to face Shiro from where he had been staring out the window to his left.

“I don’t have to do anything! And I don’t want to get anywhere, alright? So there you go, Shiro, problem solved. Now you can stop worrying about me. In fact, you can forget about me completely. It would be better for both of us.” He spat.

Shiro was taken aback, “Keith-“

“Just give up! I’m the only project of the great Captain Shirogane’s that’s ever going to fail. I’ve accepted it, Shiro, you need to as well.”

Keith could see the anger that lighted in Shiro’s eyes at that. Finally, he thought, now you’ll give up on me. 

Shiro’s jaw was clenched so that he had to force the words, “You know people told me before that I wouldn’t make the Garrison? Wouldn’t even make it out of the village? People tell me what I can and can’t do, Keith, and you know what? They’re always wrong. You’re not an exception to that and you’re not a project.” He twisted his mouth as he flung the word back at Keith. Keith flinched as it landed and searched desperately for something to throw back at his mentor, either verbally or physically.

Keith and Shiro don’t fight. Well maybe they do. When it’s important enough. And Keith is apparently important enough.

“I’m not the same as you, Shiro. I don’t do things right. I fuck everything up. It’s just who I am and you can’t change it. The Garrison isn’t for people like me, okay? It just isn’t. It’s for people who are better than I am. You can’t change it.” Keith was pleading with him by the end. Pleading to just believe it, to let him go, to give up on him. Keith has wasted so much of Shiro’s time fooling him. Pretending to be something better than he really was. Manipulating this man who was too kind for his own good, too compassionate to leave a kid in a shitty situation when he could help him out of it, making him believe that Keith was worth his time when really, Keith knew all along that he wasn’t worth it. Keith knew and he lied and he is the worst person he knows for it. For taking advantage of Shiro’s kindness. There was no hope for Keith, and yet he let Shiro believe in it anyway. And he hated himself for that.

“It’s too late.”

“It’s not too late, dammit!” Shiro was getting desperate. There was something in Keith’s eyes that was scaring him. An emptiness, like Keith had already given up.

“If I went to your foster home that day and you were dead, then it would have been too late. If I had gotten there ten minutes later, Keith, then it would have been too late. And I can’t tell how much those ten minutes have tortured me.” His voice cracked, but Shiro didn’t care anymore, lost to the memory. “In my dreams, I’m too late. And I walk in to that living room and I see the one thing I never, ever want to see in real life. I can’t see that, Keith.” He adds extra weight to those words, because the emptiness in Keith’s eyes is telling him that he should. “But until you’re gone for good, then it’s not too late. You can always fix things, okay?”

There was quiet for a moment, as Keith looked around for something to break. The wall, or the window. His own bones preferably or Shiro’s nose if he could. He wouldn’t do that though. He never wanted to hurt Shiro, but he knew that he would. Keith felt his stomach clench with the guilt. It was racing up his insides, trying to get to his mouth, trying to tell Shiro that he would never put him through that, he would never make him live his nightmares. But he knew it wasn’t true and he shoved against the guilt with resolve, resolve that things would be better for Shiro, for everyone, even if he didn’t know it. 

“I don’t want to.”

Shiro began to feel the tendrils of doubt creep in at that, starting to question why he came. A cold fear had set in, the coldness of dawning understanding. The boy he had come to care so much about, the boy he had come to love, unquestionably, like a little brother was already standing like an empty carcass, and if he didn’t do something about it, Shiro felt that the carcass analogy may be a reality before too long. And that thought stole his breath like a hand around his throat.

“Where did I go wrong?” Keith jerked his head up, shocked, to stare at Shiro, and Shiro could see the pain he tried so hard to mask.

“What?” he choked.

“That’s what I’m going to be asking myself for the rest of my life, after you’re gone. What did I do wrong? What did I miss? Because I would stay here all night, Keith. I would stay in this room with you for as long as it takes if it got you to believe me. But if it doesn’t work, if nothing I say works, then I’ll just stay with you in the silence. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll figure something else out. And if, in the end, it all fails and you’re gone, then I’ll ask myself every night for the next fifty years where I went wrong.”

That cut Keith. The poky Garrison dorm was too small to hold the magnitude of emotions pumping from both of them then. Keith felt his resolve crumble, nearly saw the pieces falling away under the attack Shiro had levelled against it. Suddenly all his reasons, all the logic he had created to support his conclusion that his plan was the best option didn’t seem as convincing anymore. Shiro wouldn’t be better off, because Shiro wouldn’t recover. Keith had gotten to know the man very well in the last year, and he knew that he was telling the truth. Shiro would never let it go. He would always find places where he went wrong, paths he missed and should have taken. But through all of it, he would never lay the blame at Keith’s door and that was what killed Keith, because his door was the only place for it. As his conviction fell away, tears began to build behind his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, some time before his last foster home, and he definitely didn’t want Shiro seeing. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, he asked “What do you want from me, Shiro?”

Shiro dropped his hands from where they had been gripping his hair and waved them towards the kid. “I want you to want more for yourself, Keith! I want you to stop doing what everyone else has done and just giving up on yourself! I want you to stop thinking you’re not worth the Garrison, you’re not worth me caring about you, you’re not worth anything good. Because you are. I know that. And I ne- I need you to know that.”

Keith didn’t respond, still didn’t open his eyes to even look at him and Shiro turned turned to face the back wall, hands returning to their spot in his hair. He’s not listening. This isn’t working. I don’t know what to do.

“Do you really?”

“What?” Shiro snapped.

“Do you really believe that I’m worth it?”  
“God, Keith.” He faced the kid he had pretty much adopted. He released some of his tension in an exhale and found some calm within the truth of the next statement. “It’s one of the only things I know for certain these days.”

“Shiro? Did I ever say thank you?”

Shiro shook his head, “You don’t need to- “

“No,” Keith interrupted, “I do need to. I do.”

“Okay then.” 

Before he could blink, arms too-long for the torso suddenly at Shiro’s chest wrapped around him and squeezed. Shiro gently folded his arms around the boy he had come to love so much, but soon he was clinging on to him like he was afraid of something terrible happening if he let him go. This was his kid, his little brother. Shiro didn’t know how he had survived 20 years without him already but he knew he could never survive without him again. So he held him with a grip that the gods couldn’t break if they tried, and not the universe or the Garrison or Keith himself was going to take him from Shiro.

If he wasn’t paying attention, he might have missed the “Thank you” mumbled into his chest. Lucky then that he always paid attention to Keith.

“I will do this every day if you need me to.” They stayed there for a while, Shiro never loosening his grip until the sniffles he had been pretending not to notice subsided. When he was sure Keith was ready, he disentangled the smaller boy from him and smiled as Keith hurriedly rubbed the snot off his nose.

“Now go apologise to Quinner, and make sure you grovel. Whatever you have to do to get him to let you redo that assignment.”

Keith nodded and moved towards the door. In the doorframe he paused and glanced back to Shiro.

“You staying?” 

Shiro saw the vulnerability in that question, and his heart squeezed.

“I’ll be right here when you get back.”

Keith smiled and left, and Shiro jumped backwards onto the bed, grabbing a book off Keith’s locker and settling in to wait for his little brother’s return. He would tease Keith about whatever disturbing punishment Quinner meted out to him, help him to do the assignment and then spend the rest of the night laughing at whatever Fast and Furious movie was out this time and eating their bodyweight in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. And if Shiro never took his arm from around Keith’s shoulders, and Keith wiped his eyes a few more times than a Fast and Furious movie called for, neither of them mentioned it.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the song How to Save a Life by The Fray.  
> I asked my boyfriend if he wanted to read this and he said "Sorry I don't really want to." That makes me laugh a lot to be honest. I'm glad someone read it though if you're down here reading these notes. Drop me a comment or a kudos if you want to show my boyfriend how to treat a girl. I'll make sure to show him anything.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!!
> 
> see you soon  
> \- Niamh


End file.
